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Maple sugaring demo gives people a chance to learn about historic Ohio tribes

Shelly Watson and Talon Silverhorn demonstrating the late eighteenth century way of making maple sugar from a Shawnee perspective.
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
Shelly Watson and Talon Silverhorn demonstrating the late eighteenth century way of making maple sugar from a Shawnee perspective.

Shelly Watson (Navajo Nation) and Talon Silverhorn (Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma) demonstrated the late eighteenth century way of making maple sugar from a Shawnee perspective over the weekend at the Hale Farm Maple Sugar festival in Summit County.

Both Silverhorn and Watson are professional Native cultural interpreters from Yellow Springs who used to work at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

Maple syrup
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
Maple syrup

Their interpretation was significant–this year is the first time Native cultural interpreters have been at the Hale Farm living history museum for the sugar festival. They joined other museum educators who have, for years, run a sugar shack at the event that interprets how predominantly white early 19th century Western Reserve settlers made maple syrup.

It also comes as some organizations across the state like Caesar's Ford Theatre and the Ohio History Connection are making a concerted effort to work with members of federally recognized tribes to better tell history.

Travis Henline, executive director at Hale Farm, said that since taking over the museum a few years ago it’s been a priority to hire tribal citizens.

“There is a profound ignorance among the general public when it comes to Native American subject matter. There's a tendency to relegate Native people to the past,” Henline said. “By bringing Native people in to interact with the public, not only do they get to share about their history and their culture, but they get to emphasize the fact that they are still here in the 21st century, that their cultures are vibrant, that they still have them and that they are doing quite fine.”

Silverhorn and Watson spoke with festival attendees over the weekend. They taught them about how people in the Eastern Woodlands have been turning tree sap into sugar for hundreds of years, including historic Ohio tribes like the Delaware, Miami, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Seneca-Cayuga, Shawnee, and Wyandotte.

Silverhorn and Watson tend to the pot of sap
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
Silverhorn and Watson tend to the pot of sap

The process to turn sap to sugar takes close to 12 hours. They started boiling ten gallons of sugar maple sap over a wood fire in brass pots on Saturday morning. They stirred the pots with paddles and tended to the fire, reducing the sap for the rest of the day into Sunday.

If Silverhorn and Watson stopped there, they would have maple syrup. Instead, they continued to cook down the syrup until it crystalized.

"Sugar will keep pretty much indefinitely as long as it's dry. That's what we're aiming for here,” Silverhorn said. “In a single sugar season, a Shawnee family will produce pretty much all of the sugar they'll need for a year, which is about a pound per person."

In 2019, researchers found that the average American now eats 57 pounds of sugar every year.

Sugar molds
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
Sugar molds

Silverhorn and Watson then put the maple sugar into wooden molds until it hardened into sugar loaves that are easy to transport. That sugar can be scraped off the hard loaf to be used in hot chocolate, coffee, over squash and in traditional dishes like bean bread, corn mush, and grape dumplings.

Watson said the time of year when the sap runs is from the first warm day of winter until the last cold night — usually about three to four weeks (though that season is changing in Ohio because of climate change).

Maple sugar
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
Maple sugar

“That becomes our sugaring season,” she said. “Our home away from home, when this time of year hits, we build these temporary homes out away from our villages in the sugar bush where we know these trees are and we just live out there and tap and boil and pour and make sugar.”

Watson said sugaring is still done today, including by the citizens of historic Ohio tribes that are now headquartered in Oklahoma. She said instead of boiling the sap over a fire in brass pots, people use stove tops or outdoor propane boilers with big, wide flat-pans that help the sap reduce quicker.

Silverhorn and Watson will be at Hale Farm again this Saturday, March 11 and Sunday March, 12 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to demonstrate traditional late 18th century Shawnee maple sugaring.

Chris Welter is a reporter and corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms.

Chris Welter is the Managing Editor at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.

Chris got his start in radio in 2017 when he completed a six-month training at the Center for Community Voices. Most recently, he worked as a substitute host and the Environment Reporter at WYSO.
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